The Truthdig columnist begins this speech to the Veterans for Peace convention by saying, "Physical courage is something you see on a battlefield. Moral courage you almost never see." - 2010/09/01.

Attorney files lawsuit against state alleging false arrest and imprisonment, seeks $700,000

Norman Christopher Usiak was in a hurry. The attorney from Frederick had briefs to file, and in the rush, he couldn't remember where he put his wallet. He was wearing dark pants and a white T-shirt, an un-lawyerly ensemble a police officer described as "looking disheveled."

It was 4:10 in the afternoon and the Maryland Court of Appeals building in Annapolis closed in 20 minutes.

The regular bailiffs had gone home, replaced by a police officer for the Maryland Department of General Services, which runs and secures state office buildings.

Usiak signed his name in the register but refused the officer's demand to show a photo Identification.

Police wrote in a report that the attorney told them he left his driver's license in his car and didn't feel like walking back. Usiak said he refused out of principle.

Tens of millions of innocent, unsuspecting Americans, who are mired deeply in the mental "health" system, have actually been made crazy by the use of or the withdrawal from commonly-prescribed, brain-altering, brain-disabling, indeed brain-damaging psychiatric drugs that have been, for many decades, cavalierly handed out like candy -- often in untested and therefore unapproved combinations of drugs -- to trusting and unaware patients by equally unaware but well-intentioned physicians who have been under the mesmerizing influence of slick and obscenely profitable psychopharmaceutical drug companies, a.k.a. BigPharma.

That is the conclusion of two books by investigative journalist and health science writer Robert Whitaker. His first book, entitled Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill noted that there has been a 600 percent increase (since Thorazine was introduced in the US in the mid-1950s) in the total and permanent disabilities of millions of psychiatric drug-takers. This uniquely First World mental ill health epidemic has resulted in the life-long taxpayer-supported disabilities of rapidly increasing numbers of psychiatric patients who are now unable to be happy, productive, taxpaying members of society.

Whitaker has done a powerful, albeit unwelcome job of presenting previously hidden, but very convincing evidence to support his thesis, that it is the drugs and not the diagnosis that is causing the epidemic of mental illness disability. Many open-minded physicians and many aware psychiatric patients are now motivated to be wary of any and all synthetic chemicals that can cross the blood/brain barrier because all of them are capable of altering the brain in ways totally unknown to medical science, especially when the patients are taking the drugs long-term. .

Fox News is either evil or stupid for not mentioning that Alwaleed bin Talal is News Corp.'s largest shareholder.

The World Health Organization is projecting that this year cancer will become the world's leading cause of death. Why the epidemic of cancer? Death certificates in United States show cancer as being the eighth leading cause of death in 1900.

Why has it skyrocketed to now surpass heart disease as number one?

Is it because people live longer and have to die of something? That's a factor, but not the prime reason as reflected by the jump in age-adjusted cancer being far above what could be expected from increased longevity. And it certainly doesn't explain the steep hike in childhood cancers. Is it lifestyle, diet and genetics, as we have often been told? They are factors, but not key reasons.

The cause of the cancer epidemic, as numerous studies have now documented, is largely environmental - the result of toxic substances in the water we drink, the food we eat, the consumer products we use, the air we breathe.

US Government admits satellite temperature readings "degraded." All data taken offline in shock move. Global warming temperatures may be 10 to 15 degrees too high.

The fault was first detected after a tip off from an anonymous member of the public to climate skeptic blog, Climate Change Fraud (view original article) (August 9, 2010).

Caught in the center of the controversy is the beleaguered taxpayer funded National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA's Program Coordinator, Chuck Pistis has now confirmed that the fast spreading story on the respected climate skeptic blog is true.

However, NOAA spokesman, Program Coordinator, Chuck Pistis declined to state how long the fault might have gone undetected. Nor would the shaken spokesman engage in speculation as to the damage done to the credibility of a decade's worth of temperature readings taken from the problematic 'NOAA-16' satellite.

Perhaps the most important question of our time why, throughout human history, have despicable characters repeatedly risen to the pinnacles of power. The 20th Century alone witnessed an estimated 140 million war deaths and another 16 million from genocide. Mass starvation kills millions in an era when there is plenty enough food to feed the world. And not coincidentally, in the world today 40% of the world's wealth is held in the hands of 1% of its inhabitants, while the bottom 50% owns only 1% of the world's wealth. That means that the top 1% owns 40 times more than half the world's population. There are of course numerous reasons for this sorry state of affairs. But certainly the tremendous wealth and power disparity in the world, along with the abuse of that power by so many who have the most of it explains a great deal. Why have so many despicable characters throughout history acquired the ability to inflict so much suffering on the rest of humanity?

I have read two books in particular that provide much insight into this issue: The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer (This link is to a free electronic version of Altemeyer's whole book); and, Political Ponerology - A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes by Andrew M. Lobaczewski. Both books talk about much the same process, but Altemeyer approaches it from the individual psychological perspective, whereas Lobaczewski approaches it more from the societal level. Both books were recommended to me by fellow DUer Larry Ogg.

Over 62 million mortgages are now held in the name of MERS, an electronic recording system devised by and for the convenience of the mortgage industry. A California bankruptcy court, following landmark cases in other jurisdictions, recently held that this electronic shortcut makes it impossible for banks to establish their ownership of property titles - and therefore to foreclose on mortgaged properties. The logical result could be 62 million homes that are foreclosure-proof.

Mortgages bundled into securities were a favorite investment of speculators at the height of the financial bubble leading up to the crash of 2008. The securities changed hands frequently, and the companies profiting from mortgage payments were often not the same parties that negotiated the loans. At the heart of this disconnect was the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS, a company that serves as the mortgagee of record for lenders, allowing properties to change hands without the necessity of recording each transfer.

MERS was convenient for the mortgage industry, but courts are now questioning the impact of all of this financial juggling when it comes to mortgage ownership. To foreclose on real property, the plaintiff must be able to establish the chain of title entitling it to relief. But MERS has acknowledged, and recent cases have held, that MERS is a mere "nominee" - an entity appointed by the true owner simply for the purpose of holding property in order to facilitate transactions. Recent court opinions stress that this defect is not just a procedural but is a substantive failure, one that is fatal to the plaintiff's legal ability to foreclose.

That means hordes of victims of predatory lending could end up owning their homes free and clear - while the financial industry could end up skewered on its own sword.

With all the hoopla about the Moon having or not having water, let's not forget our satellite's best-known features: its craters.

Although typically a sign of an ancient, unchanged landscape, a new crater on the Moon reminds us that we still live in an intergalactic shooting gallery.

The new crater was announced last week by the Lunar Science Institute at NASA Ames. The impact occurred sometime between an image of the region taken by the Apollo program in 1971 and an image recently taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).

The LRO is a spacecraft that is taking large amounts of data on the Moon's terrain and mineralogy, as well as taking those neat pictures of the Apollo landers and astronaut footsteps.

The crater itself is ten meters across, suggesting to me that the impactor was roughly a meter in size. Chunks of rock that size might hit the Earth several times a year, causing a stir in the local media or falling harmlessly and unnoticed. On the Moon however, it makes a bright crater, spewing forth lighter colored rock over the dark basalt surface.

After reading the incredible book Political Ponerology: A science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes by Andrew Lobaczewski, I had a transcendental moment of realization (sort of an "Eureka!" moment). I have to conclude that ponerology and psychopathy are two significant concepts that best explain the sorry state of human affairs in this world which continue to negatively impact on our society, our lives, and our future. No, I don't think it has anything to do with "greed" or even "moral weakness" (however you define it). It has to do with psychopathology and its influence on the nature of evil in society.

People in positions of power that systematically perpetuate evil behave as if they were a different human species; a 'para-Homo sapiens,' if you will. No matter how much good will there is in the world, there continues to be much war, suffering and injustice. It doesn't seem to matter what plan, ideology, religion, or philosophy great minds come up with, nothing seems to improve our lot. And it has been that way for thousands of years, repeating over and over again. We rationalize evil's existence as being part of "human nature," a necessary part of the complexity of the world, due to perennial greed or lack of enlightenment, triggered by mutually exclusive competing interests, etc.; however, those who subscribe to these principles and attitudes may have rendered a premature judgment and closed the book on evil without examining all evidence from different, previously unexamined points of view.

Ponerology and "successful" psychopathology (i.e. not the "violent serial killer" type, but the Stalin, Pol Pot, Cheney, Rockefeller, Kissinger, Bill Clinton, or Donald Rumsfeld type) clinically explain how "pathocracies" - the system of government created by a small pathological minority that takes control over a society of non-psychopaths - are generated and dominated by those that possess an inborn error (psychopathy) prevalent in 4-6% of the population, which is physiologically unable to feel normal human empathy. They are emotionless, selfish, cold and calculating, and devoid of any moral or ethical standards, yet they are intelligent, charming, driven, focused, and therefore tend to achieve the highest positions of power by concealing their true nature under a "mask of sanity." This concept applies to all existing hierarchical power structures.